Memories of an ancient accident … one canal …. and that steep incline … Stoney Brew

Nothing quite prepares you for the way Jutland Street just drops away in front of your eyes.

Jutland Street before the drop, 2025

It is the road that runs from Ducie Street down to Store Street and it crosses the Ashton Canal. 

I first came across it in the summer of 1975 in the company of Norman Parry who had grown up close to the canal and still remembered all his childhood haunts.

Looking up Jutland Street, 1966

It had been a conversation one dinner hour about old Manchester that prompted Norman to offer a guided tour of the back streets around Piccadilly Railway Station and the basin of the Aston Canal.

And having told me he had learnt to swim in the canal he mischievously brought me to the summit of Jutland Street and with an impish smile told me to walk ahead of him and was pleased with my stunned reaction.

The road does just fall away, and it is a marvel that in the age of the horse and cart it was not prohibited to travel down the incline.

But I guess carters did take the chance, but with a heavy load and primitive brakes it has always struck me as an accident about to happen.

And looking down, 2025

And some time in the 1930s witnessed by Norman that is what happened.  A fully loaded wagon plummeted down the road smashing into a stone pillar outside what had been a timber yard.  The carter escaped but the horse was crushed.

All of which makes the popular name for the road which was “Stoney Brew” quite apt, but I sometimes wonder whether the present residents in their fine modern apartments on either side of Jutland Street are aware of the nick name, and I certainly don’t think they have come across the accident.

Looking at that incline it makes me think that ascending the road with a full load must have been equally dangerous.

The canal and Junction/Jutland Street 1849

And yet waggons must have done the trip, because the Ashton Canal ran in to a busy basin which back in 1849 was surrounded by the warehouses of various canal companies as well as the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and the North Staffordshire Railway, assorted coal wharfs and stone yards along with the Store Street Iron Works.

The canal had been completed in 1797 and my Priestly tells me “The Town of Manchester derives considerable advantage by the facility with which this canal and branches supply it with stone and coal at an easy rate”.*

And that for now is it.

Location; Jutland Street, formerly Junction Street

Pictures; Jutland Street from Store Street, 1966, : m02382, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Jutland Street, 2025, courtesy of Google Maps and the area in 1849, .from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Historical Account of the Navigable Rivers, Canals, and Railways Throughout The United Kingdom, John Priestly, 1830

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... a revolution on wash day

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now this was Dad's welcoming present to 294 when we moved in in 1964.

I say Dad's but the reality will be that it will have been mum who insisted on this piece of cutting edge technology.

And with that "keyplate" which "automatically selects the right water temperature, the right washing action, the right number of rinses and the right spin-drying time for what ever wash you are doing" we could really feel the future had arrived.

And on top of all that here was a front loading machine which was already plumbed in and needed no endless filling of water buckets to put into the machine.

I could also comment on the rather sexist headline but won't.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; advert for the Hoover Keymatic, The Observer Magazine January 30 1966 from the collection of Andrew Simpson







*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, 

Mrs. Mary Francis Kelsall of Chorlton ……… politician ……. textile worker …… and mother

I like the way that a story I wrote just a few days ago can come back with a series of twists.*

Mary Frances Kelsall, on her 90th birthday, 1979

In this case it began with a story of a Mr. Brightman who stood for election to the City Council in the November of 1945 for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy ward. ** 

Election leaflet, Chorlton -cum-Hardy Labour Party, 1945

His running mate was a Mrs. Kellsall and I promised to return when I knew more about her.

And out of the blue Trevor James emailed me with, “I know of Mrs. Kelsall. I did quite a bit of family history work for a lady in Wisconsin – on a quid pro quo basis, as she did lots for me in the USA. 

As our research progressed, parallels grew. It ended up with finding that my mother had travelled daily into town with a distant relative of [the Wisconsin lady] – the said Mrs. Kelsall. This was immediately post-WW2. 

The Kelsall’s lived on the Barlow Hall estate, on Floyd Avenue.”***

And that was enough to spur me on, fulfil the promise, and fin her I did. 

Doreen, Frances & Mary Francis Kelsall, 1928

She was Mary Frances, born in 1889, married in 1913, with two children, and died in 1985.

In 1921 the family were at 10 Bland Street Moss Side, and she worked as a shirt machinist for Central Shirt Co, at 19 East Street, which employed 739 people.

The firm is listed in the 1911 directory in a building it shared with various companies, including a merchant, embroider hat manufacturer shipping merchants and Milling engineers.  The large building was at the end of East Street as it ran into Bale Street and stood opposite the famous Tommy Ducks pub.

By 1939 she was living at 18 Floyd Avenue off Barlow Moor Road.

And in 1945 according to the minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party she was one of six members who were invited to attend a selection meeting “for the final choice of candidates”. ****

Looking through the record of the Party for the 1940s I can at present find only one other reference to her, which was in June 1945 when she is listed as a sub agent in the forthcoming General Election.

At that particular meeting the group had discussed the “broad principles of the campaign”, along with “general arrangements for meetings, committee rooms, clerical work, literature and canvassing”.*****

Mr. Brightman had been appointed agent and the sub agents were Mr. Luly for Withington, Mr. Ball for Chorlton and Mrs. Kelsall for East Didsbury.All of which appeared in an account of Mrs. Kellar on Friday, but what was missing was a photograph and I began the piece lamenting that “I doubt I will ever turn up a picture of Mary Frances Kelsall”.

Manchester Labour and Election News, October, 1945

And now like a corporation bus I have two both of which turned up at the same time, for which I have Mary L Price of Wisconsin to that thank.

She is related to Mrs. Kelsall and kindly offered up the three images.

So finally, I can look on her, while as yet there is only Labour Party election leaflet featuring her name and policies, I am confident more will out.

And on a personal note I was the election agent for the Chorlton Labour Party from 1980 till 1987 and again during the early 1990s. As such I oversaw the historic first victory of a Labour candidate in Chorlton in 1986 and was one of the sub agents in the Manchester Withington Parliamentary election which saw Keith Bradley elected as the first Labour MP.

Chorlton Labour Party Election material, 1980

I don't know if Mrs Kelsall was still living in the area or if she retained her political beliefs but I like to think it makes a link between me and her.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures: Mary Frances Kelsall aged 90, 1979, and in 1928 with her two children, courtesy of Mary L Price, and Election material from 1945, courtesy of M G Wittard, and Chorlton Labour Party Election material, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Mrs. Mary Frances Kelsall ……… an election …. and the search for her story, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/11/mrs-mary-frances-kelsall-election-and.html

**Mr. Brightman ….. Chorlton-cum-Hardy……… and the election of 1945, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/11/mr-brightman-chorlton-cum-hardy-and.html

***Trevor James, November 21st 2022

****Minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party September 13th, 1945

*****Minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party November 6th, 1945

Mr. Frank Beverley ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy .... 1937

This is Frank Beverley, and in 1937 he stood as the Labour Party candidate in the Municipal Elections.

Vote for Frank Beverley, 1937

And to date there is little more I can find about him.

I think he was born in the January of 1911, and his parents were George and Ada who were living on Chester Road.  George Beverley was a cabinet maker and Frank was one of six children, and in the March of 1911, he was baptised in St Mathew’s Church.

After that a Frank Beverley is recorded in the 1939 Register as living in lodgings in Southport working as a tool maker.

There will be more but at present that is it.

Election material, 1980

Which brings me back to the 1937 election and his candidacy.  

According to the Manchester Guardian “Sixty-eight candidates – 31 Labour, 26 Conservatives, seven Liberals and four Independents were nominated for the elections, but as eight of them, four Labour, three Conservatives and one Liberal were returned unopposed there were contests in only 28 of the 36 wards into which the city is divided,”*

The results showed little change with the Tories gaining one extra seat, and Labour losing one with losses by the Liberals to both Conservative and Independent candidates.  

At the end of the night the new balance of power favoured the Tories, with 64 Conservative Councillors, 52 Labour, 22 Liberal and 6 Independents. 

I have yet to find Mr. Beverley’s election address, but the Manchester Guardian reported that “no single major issue is at stake and the campaign has largely resolved around the question of rates, and social services generally, although traffic congestion and exorbitant price demanded for land for rehousing on cleared sites near the centre of the city have had a good deal of attention from Liberal and Labour candidates.”**

The agreement between the Conservative and Liberals not to put up candidates against each other which had been a feature of the last all out Council elections in 1931 in an effort to maximize an anti Labour vote had broken down, but this did not impact on Labour’s result.

The result, 1937

As for Frank in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, he lost.  

The Tories polled 5,776 votes and Labour 2,052.

Undeterred he accepted the nomination to stand again in 1939 but withdrew in the October “owing to a change in his employment [and so] would be unable to contest the forthcoming election”***

It is unclear whether he was a member of the Chorlton branch, but the Party conveyed their best “thanks for past services and best wishes for his future success.” 

All of which suggests he was the Frank Beverley working in Southport.

Mr. Beverley, 1937

But that like so much about him remains to be discovered, including just who left the leaflet at the Town Hall for Cllr Mathew Benham who is one of the three elected Labour Councillors for Chorlton who as elected a full 85 years after Mr. Beverley contested the seat. 

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Election leaflet, courtesy of Cllr Mathew Benham and election material from 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Independents Gain Most in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, November 2nd, 1937

**Today’s Municipal Elections, Manchester Guardian, November 1st, 1937

***Minutes of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Labour Party, October 11th, 1939.

The class of ’68 part 7 ……. Ranger's House and a folk concert

Now, a little bit of my past has bounced back into my life in the form pf a program and a folk concert ticket.

'....... all that life can afford', 1967

And what follows is less a bit of vanity and more just a comment on how exciting it was to be at one of our big three comprehensives in the late 1960s.

The three were Crown Woods, Eltham Green and Kidbrook, and I went to Crown Woods.

And in the December of 1967 along with some close friends and lots of other people, I took part in two performances of “all that life can afford” at the Ranger’s House in Blackheath.

The house dates from the 1720s and was a fitting venue for a performance of selected verse, prose and music from the 18th century.

The show lasted for two nights, and drew on the writings of Daniel Defoe, James Boswell, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Wesley, along with Voltaire, Bernard de Mandeville and the duc de Liancourt.

From the program, cast, writers and researcher, 1967

And dominating the evening was Samuel Johnson, whose throwaway comment that “He that is tired of London is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford”, provided the title for the show.

The sequence was in two parts, the first offering up “pictures of the streets [with] gin drinking, poverty and crime and punishment”, and the second exploring “the intellectual and religious life, as well as entertaining in high society, the military and naval activities of Blackheath and Greenwich and the famous Greenwich Fair.” *

The night concluded with the sonnet Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth, which is near you will get to the perfect piece of praise for the city of London.

I remember I had been less than willing to participate and had a long conversation with Mr. Marland who was Head of English and put forward a series of reasons why I couldn’t take part, each of which was more desperate and unconvincing than the one before.

When finally, I gave in, and agreed, Mr. Marland gave me the script with my name at the top and the part I was to play already identified.

Some of the class of '68, 1968

The two nights were a great success but were only one of a number of different performances which the school had offered up.

These included, The Causian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht, An Enemy of the People by Ibsen, Billy Liar, Antigone, The Peterloo Massacre, and the sixteenth century play Gammer Gurton’s Needle along with other dramatic and musical anthologies.

All of which sat beside regular evenings of poetry, prose and music performed by the staff and students of the English Department.

Ranger's House and Samuel Johnson, 1967

Now I fully accept that similar events went on at Eltham Green and Kidbrook, and I do remember the annual Sixth Form Conferences attended by schools from across the capital which featured some of the best figures from the sciences and the arts who were invited to speak.

The point is that these were put on by comprehensive schools, and not grammar or public schools and in doing so were proudly asserting that they were the equal and perhaps superior to the older and established “places of education”.

Nor did it stop there, because Crown Woods gave us the opportunity to act independently.


In the winter of 1967 Dave Hatch and I were allowed to do our own radio show, featuring folk music, which went out on the internal radio system.

And a little later, when I asked if I could run a series of folk concerts with local singers in the school library, the answer was yes.

Folk at Crown Woods, 1968

I long ago forgot the details and had just a vague memory of who performed, but here Dave came to my rescue again, by telling me “you said that you couldn't remember many details. 

The names of two performers stuck in my mind; Gordon Giltrap, who you recruited one Friday night at the Tigers Head, and Terry Yarnell, who worked with Anne's father in Silvertown at International Paints”.

All these opportunities could be replicated by countless others, but I think there was something special in being at one of the “big three” in Eltham and Kidbrook back then.

Pictures; Crown Woods School in “……. all that life can afford”, the folk concert ticket, and the picture of some of the class of ’68, program courtesy of Anne Davey who kept them in her scrap book and Dave hatch for sending them up to me

*Crown Woods School in “……. all that life can afford”. 

Sunlight House a building “which has improved the appearance of the city and given it a dignity”

Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping

Sunlight House is still a pretty impressive building and has been so since it was built in 1932 by the architect Joseph Sunlight.

It stands on Quay Street just down from Deansgate and a little before you get to the Opera House.

It was at the time according to the Manchester Guardian, “the tallest and largest building in Manchester, [standing] on a site of 3,000 square yards and rises 200 feet from the red rock foundations to its roof ridge. 

People who pass it are amazed at its massiveness.  It is a landmark which can be seen on a clear day from the Belmont Hills beyond Bolton, twenty miles distant.” 

Now I rather think I will go looking for what people thought about the building in 1931, and particularly on its impact as a landmark, if only to reflect on the response to that other tall building, which is the Beetham Tower.

The Beetham Tower is the tallest building in the Manchester dominating the sky line and can be seen from miles outside the city.

I do have mixed feelings about this modern giant alternating between that easy and lazy response that it is a blot on the landscape to marvelling at its sheer size and elegance.  But that I guess is how all new buildings are viewed.

Like Sunlight House the Tower sits on a comparatively small plot on Deansgate and is named after its developers.

But this is not about the Beetham Tower so I shall return to that article from the Guardian which writes

“It is shaped almost like a cube and is so proportioned as to be classic in form.  Modern conceptions of architecture are expressed in the sleekness and in the vertical lines.

There are sixteen storeys in the building and about a thousand rooms.  The basement, lofty and with large top-lighted dome is to be used as a restaurant and the ground floor for shops or showrooms and restaurant-café.

The occupants of the top floors will be able to enjoy fresh breezes in a healthy environment, unfamiliar in narrow streets and dark offices.

Every modern aid to cleanliness and efficiency is embodied.  The floors are of polished oak throughout the building.  

An electric vacuum cleaning apparatus draws the dust down to a receptacle in the basement.  

Express lifts are installed to travel at 450 feet per minute.  In every room there is an electric synchronised clock.

The architect has taken particular care to arrange for the most adequate lighting and ventilation.  

By widening the adjoining street to twice its previous breadth he improved the lighting at the same time as he enhanced the building perspective.  

The result is that people in the offices in Sunlight House will work under hygienic conditions.  The heating system of radiators is, further, conducive to cleanliness in the atmosphere.”

And at this point in the article I have almost lost the will to live.

Now I know that the newspaper story is a valuable contemporary account and no doubt the people who worked there were impressed but the piece reads just like a promotional extract from Mr Sunlight’s own notes.

An observation which is confirmed by the claim that

“Before this new pile was erected the site contained some of Manchester’s worst slums, and it is satisfactory to note, in view of the difficulties which Manchester and other places are having in the matter of removing slum populations and providing them with alternative accommodation that private enterprise has helped to transfer successfully the tenants of a congested area and put up a building with a rateable value of “30,000 a year.”

Which is where I shall leave Sunlight House for today, but there is more and I shall return tomorrow with just a little bit more on the building, its architect and his frustrated plans.

*Sunlight House, the Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1931


Photograph; properties on Quay Street, 1910, m68184,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council 


Painting; Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

When history joins science fiction …… and becomes a book for children of all ages

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when history collides with science fiction it’s bound to be fun*.

Well Jane Austen it ain’t but it is a start and perfectly fixes Peter Topping’s new book for kids of all ages.

“Chorlton Library is an Alien Spaceship” is the story of a boy called Chortle from Chorlton-cum-Hardy. 

It starts with that well known historic building, which is our library, weaves into that the idea that its shape might just resemble a spaceship, throws in an alien and there is the  story.

So, everyone knows that Chorlton Library was opened in 1914 and partly funded by that American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.  

Few perhaps that the original plans travelled across the Atlantic in the Titanic, only getting as far as an iceberg, thereby delaying the building of the library till new plans could be sent to Mr. Carnegie for his approval.

And I doubt anyone will be able to identify who were the inspiration for the stone heads which flank the entrance.

But if you come along to the launch at Chorlton Library on November 26th at 3.45 pm you can be part of the story, join in the fun and get a free copy of the book while stocks last.

And that is it. 

Children of all ages are welcome; it won’t cost a thing and will be fun.

Location; Chorlton Library, Manchester Road

Pictures; the launch poster by Peter Topping, strange faces and an entrance, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026

*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife..." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 1813